Media Release 19 June 2012 – for immediate release
Attention: Education and Political Reporters

PM Should Back Leaders Not League Tables

School principals are questioning how the Prime Minister can expect parents to get honest, clear and comprehensive information about a school’s performance when it is based on league tables representing unreliable national standards data in two subjects.

‘Principals are opposed to giving parents untruthful information about their children or about their school and any information built from national standards data is misleading,’ says Paul Drummond, President of the New Zealand Principals’ Federation.

‘Our education rankings are up with the top in the world and countries that have league tables are not up there with us,’ said Drummond.

‘The Prime Minister should back the winners, the leaders in New Zealand who aspire to be the best,’ says Drummond.

The Prime Minister is reported as wanting parents to be able to access information on a school and see the progress they are making in lifting achievement in literacy and numeracy overall. He says that ‘it is complicated as hell’, because it is progress reporting that parents want by different subject types and by different age groups. He also added that he doesn’t want league tables to damage schools by having the information presented in the wrong way.

‘We agree with the Prime Minister. We want parents to have progress information in all subjects and we cannot support anything that will damage schools or the children we teach,’ said Drummond.

‘We will continue to give parents full and truthful information on their children’s progress in all areas of the curriculum,’ said Drummond. ‘If parents want to know about the performance of their school or others, they can go to the ERO website and look up the school evaluation reports now. They can be assured that the information they find is truthful, in context, based on multiple factors and fair,’ says Drummond.

ENDS

© Scoop Media